China

Some of us Buddhists, myself included, like to decry Buddhism being used as self-help or therapy. And yet, Buddhism has become so entwined with self-help that in New York Magazine's recent self-help issue, half of the six feature articles mention Buddhism in some way. Kathryn Schulz's piece "The Self in Self-Help," accurately summarizes the whole phenomenon in just one sentence: "Curiously, Buddhism is simultaneously a burgeoning influence on the Western self-help movement and entirely at odds with it: anti-self, and anti-help."
More »

A couple months ago a review copy of the book How to Think More about Sex came to the Trike offices (we didn't order it, I swear). I remember looking at it quizzically—I'm feeling literary today, so let's say I looked at it with a furrowed brow—thinking, why would anyone want to think more about sex? Certainly we could all stand to think a little less about it.
More »

Tibetan self-immolations are continuing at an alarming rate. Since the last Buddha Buzz post on November 16, 14 more Tibetans have set themselves on fire to protest the Chinese rule. There's no denying that the self-immolations are occurring with greater frequency. Out of the 89 self-immolations since 2009, 27 of them—about 30%—have taken place this month, according to the International Campaign for Tibet. Two weeks ago, British monk Tonden (David Alain) became the first non-Tibetan to self-immolate, setting himself on fire in the garden of Nalanda monastery, in France, where the resident monks were in retreat.
More »

Echoes of the Past: The Buddhist Cave Temples of Xiangtanghsan, buddha sculptures and digital reconstructions, on New York’s Upper East Side.
The great Buddhist reliquaries of the world—be they caves, mountainside monasteries, summit stupas, or ancient monuments—remain inaccessible to most due to their remoteness. Though great leaps in transportation technology have closed vast distances, both the pillaging of artifacts and the limiting of exposure in the interest of preservation continue to make visits to these far-flung sites difficult.
More »

If there's anything we American Buddhists love to talk about, it's the emerging face of American Buddhism—whatever that means. Despite all the chatter, in my humble opinion the average American Buddhist isn't all that informed about some very basic realities of American Buddhism: who its adherents are, where they are located, what kind of Buddhism they practice, etc. Cue the Huffington Post, who this week published a slideshow of "Most and Least Buddhist Cities in America," based off of 2010 data by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies.
More »

Happy Halloween! Since it's almost time for the year's only holiday that encourages you to pretend to be someone else, it's the perfect opportunity to let you know that if you live in Thailand, your local monks might not be what they seem. In fact, the Global Post reports, they might be meth dealers. Several Thai monks have been busted recently for buying, using, and dealing speed pills. One even insisted that he was using the drug money to refurbish his temple. Maybe I've just been watching too much Breaking Bad, but for some sad reason this story didn't even surprise me. How's that for some legitimate 21st century cynicism?
More »